Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Delineating freshwater fish biogeographic regions in the Philippine archipelago
Published: 2025-04-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The Philippines, a biodiversity hotspot with a complex geological history, presents an ideal setting to study freshwater fish biogeography in archipelagos. Despite its ecological significance, analyses of freshwater fish distribution patterns across the archipelago remain lacking. This study addresses this knowledge gap by delineating native freshwater fish biogeographic regions in the [...]
Spatially varying population indices
Published: 2025-04-11
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Population Biology
Large scale monitoring is fundamental for reliably tracking the fate of animal populations under changing environments and land-use practices. A common application of large scale population monitoring data is to produce indices of temporal change in species abundances, which are used in environmental policy assessments of species and biodiversity statuses. For index estimation, spatio-temporal [...]
Speciation in ants: Unlocking ant diversity to study speciation (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Ants are among the most abundant terrestrial animals and play key roles in ecosystems across the globe. Their taxonomic and ecological diversity makes them a prime taxon for contributing to our understanding of the patterns and processes of speciation. However, studies on ants, such as those on ant diversification or taxonomy, often do not explicitly consider how their results inform or update [...]
Plant genomic variation and its implications for proposed EU NGT legislation
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Biotechnology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences, Molecular Genetics, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
The European Commission proposal for New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) of July 2023 specifies that NGT1 plants, which are considered equivalent to conventional plants, may differ from the recipient or parental plant by no more than 20 insertions, which cannot be longer than 20 bp; deletions can be of any size and number. Here, we examine the proposed 20/20 NGT1 limit against the background of the [...]
The Missing Environmental Impacts in Invasive Species Cost Assessments –Insights from an InvaCost-based regional review
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Accounting for the costs incurred due to biological invasions is important for informing invasive species management policies, and understanding and mitigating future losses. InvaCost, a living review and massive database of cost estimates, is a valuable open science resource that can support informed policy and management of invasive species and has since been the basis of many regional and [...]
The molecular evolutionary basis of species formation revisited
Published: 2025-04-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
How do new species arise? This is among the most fundamental questions in evolutionary biology. The first genetic model for how reproductive barriers leads to the origin of new species was proposed nearly 90 years ago. However, empirical evidence for the genetic mechanisms that cause reproductive barriers took many decades to accumulate. In 2010, Presgraves presented a comprehensive review of the [...]
Dynamic pollinator networks maintain pollination efficiency during mast flowering in an insect-pollinated tree
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mast seeding, the synchronous and highly variable reproduction across years, is common among perennial plants, enhancing reproductive success through predator satiation and improved pollination. Animal-pollinated species generally show lower interannual variability in seed production then wind-pollinated plants, often explained by pollinator satiation reducing selection for masting. However, [...]
Modelling approaches for meta-analyses with dependent effect sizes in ecology and evolution: A simulation study
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Methodology
In ecology and evolution, meta-analysis is an important tool to synthesise findings across separate studies and identify sources of heterogeneity. However, ecological and evolutionary data often exhibit complex dependence structures, such as shared sources of variation within studies, phylogenetic relationships, and hierarchical sampling designs. Recent statistical advancements offer approaches [...]
Drought-induced tree mortality affects the space-use and individual plasticity of an endangered forest carnivore
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology
Rapid changes in landscape structure can disrupt the ecology and life history of species of conservation concern. Shifting climate, land-use, and disturbance regimes are generating novel landscape patterns, and it is unclear how these novel conditions may affect imperiled species. In the Sierra Nevada of California, USA, extensive drought-induced tree mortality has rapidly altered forest [...]
Characterising local climates and biologically-relevant climate changes on the Southern Ocean Islands
Published: 2025-04-07
Subjects: Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The Southern Ocean climate has undergone significant changes over the last several decades, which has had consequences for conditions on the few small islands scattered across the region. Previous investigations of climate changes on the Southern Ocean Islands (SOIs) have examined single climate variables, such as temperature, and single islands or island groups. Furthermore, these studies have [...]
Reflections from the 2025 EcoHack: AI & LLM Hackathon for Applications in Evidence-based Ecological Research & Practice
Published: 2025-04-05
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences
This paper presents outcomes from the inaugural "EcoHack: AI & LLM Hackathon for Applications in Evidence-based Ecological Research & Practice," which convened participants from across Europe and beyond, culminating in 11 team submissions. These submissions highlighted six broad application areas of AI for ecology: (1) AI-enhanced decision support and automation, (2) scientific search and [...]
Understanding different types of repeatability and intra-class correlation for an analysis of biological variation
Published: 2025-04-05
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Repeatability (more generally known as intraclass correlation) represents an important quantity of interest in many scientific fields. It represents a metric for summarizing variance decomposition to identify sources of variation in an outcome of interest (e.g. organismal traits). The estimation of variance components is often achieved through linear mixed-effect models or their extension, [...]
Ecological harshness mediates reproductive trade-offs in a great tit population
Published: 2025-04-05
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Population Biology
Lack’s seminal work on bird clutch sizes has spurred expansive research on reproductive trade-offs, especially focusing on offspring quantity–quality trade-offs and the potential fitness consequences for the parents. The environment is a critical driver of the expression of individual reproductive traits, influencing them through plastic responses. However, the plasticity of reproductive [...]
The effect of group size on ectoparasite load and physiological markers of health in a communally-roosting bird
Published: 2025-04-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Group living in animals can provide individuals with many fitness benefits, but also increases their exposure to parasites. However, the relationship between group size and parasite load both across and within species is highly variable, potentially due to selection acting on adaptations to reduce infection risks and costs, as well as species-specific variation in the type and frequency of social [...]
Variability, drivers, and utility of genetic diversity-area relationships in terrestrial vertebrates
Published: 2025-04-03
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences
Maintaining genetic diversity within and among populations is critical for conservation and a prominent goal of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. However, direct estimates of genetic diversity are unavailable for most species, and time and resources are insufficient to fill these substantial data gaps and meet conservation target timelines. Robust, proxy-based predictions of [...]